Roomies buddies and painful shits Melanie, Lucy, and I have a new roommate. Her name is Vanessa Davis she is a cartoonist and a sweetie (so far anyway ). 3 cartoonists under one roof - that seems like some sort of crime against God.

In other news Andy left today in one piece. It was great to see him and recalibrate. We did sleaze it up a little by drinking plenty of beer his last night (fourth night in a row). Liam was sensible enough to not join in - though I bet if I had promised him a Mc griddle in the AM if he joined us - he would have caved.

We also ate at this Thai place down the road that served us the spiciest meals ever Andy was having real trouble and claimed it was the hottest thing he had ever eaten (he was crying at the table). My ass almost fell off this morning. Ouch!

While compiling some memories for santaclow I remembered this: I wrote in to an advice column on the http://achewood.com site. Pretty good and all true.

" Dear Ray, For several years my best friend has been trying to help to me get hip to the Aussie rock god Nick Cave. He started by playing me earlier stuff like Birthday party/ boys next door. His assumption, I think, was that seeing as I like punk music (Ramones, Stooges, X) that I would dig on this young n'raw Nick Cave. It never stuck.

His second attempt was to get me really drunk and play tape after tape of his Badseeds MTV videos. I would be seeing double watching this vampire mullet guy crooning and thinking I was going crazy.

The last straw for him was last year (this has been going on for several years) when we had tickets to go see Nick and the Seeds in concert and I arrived so late that I only caught the encore. He said that he was so enraged that I had missed the concert that he was unable to focus on anything but my empty seat.

It is not that I dislike Nick Cave and his music, on the contrary, I like and respect it. Unfortunately that is not enough for my friend. I honestly think he believes that something is wrong with me that I am not able to spend hours talking about, listening to, and watching Nick Cave. Once he got really drunk, kissed a Nick Cave Poster (which is huge by the way) then attacked me for making fun of him. Is my friend insane? Babe, I'm On Fire

Dear On Fire,

Yeah, I accidentally listened to some Nick Cave once. How is music that terrible even being made and distributed? It’s like he knows how to make music that is exactly wrong for enjoying—like he has some sort of special combination of keys, time signatures and “anti-hooks” he relies on to make songs which sound so awful that they are completely unappealing to everybody. Frankly, I’d like to hear a person who knows music theory explain exactly why it is that all of Nick Cave’s songs are so technically awful. All I know is that all my primal instincts tell me to fight and kill Nick Cave’s music."

DW from CT A couple of years ago I simultaneously got bored of posting on LJ and found this guy “DW from CT” who posted reviews on Netflix. I loved them so much that I copied several of his reviews and posted them on LJ without an explanation. I did it a couple times then forgot about him.

Tonight I checked in with him hoping that he was still reviewing movies… and read the following review for Lord of the Rings : “I really liked this movie because it made you use your imagation alot!!It had good actors and a exallent story line.It makes you wonder how they made Elijah wood so small, pretty cool.I would defently buy this movie.”

I should point out that I can’t spell for shit myself and I am not claiming to be a functioning adult with fully intact mental faculties.

end of a wicked awesome era I have decided that now after three years of LJ that I will now be changing my icon. The original intention of the mohawk skull in a neck brace was to make fun of the lack of originality among rock bands when coming up with logos for their bands(also I had begun wearing a neck brace while working at the computer or drawing table - I still do).

Unfortunately, I think that nobody understood this joke. And It must seem to strangers that I am just one more person who thinks skulls are wicked cool.

Honestly, I am afraid that this will be as horrible as santaclow changing from his chapman puppet Icon to that red splashy painting he did for a while (also a skull). So I apologize ahead of time. I shall unveil it tomorrow.

red costco day last night Liam, Perry, Heather, Melanie, and I went out to dinner and then drinks at the ruby room in Oakland. At some point the idea was formed that we would go to Costco early the next day all dressed in red. So that is what we did. here is a photo collage of the adventure- it's fairly big so watch out!

The thing is - that we have no idea how this idea of dressing in red was formed and why we all agreed upon it with such enthusiasm. None of us had more than 3 drinks so it wasn't some stupor genius decision such as the Andy Shea, Andrew Gilbert, and I trip to the aquarium (was Liam there?) while hung-over. Anyway, we shopped for the 4rth of july and If you havn't heard of the all day festivities yet consider this your invite (this means you Nikhila).

I love 1984 In a weird push from the legal department at VIZ (the manga company I do a bunch of work for) corporate logos and reference to properties (movies/books) are being removed from the artwork and stories in their comics. Today I am spending the day I am going back through an early edition of Hana-Kimi (one of my comics) and erasing Nike logos and making Mickey Mouse's ears pointy . Their is definitely a satisfaction in reducing the corporate culture strangle hold on the world even if it's just one comic book. On the other hand it's still censorship and a sign that mush headed bureaucracy is pushing forward in America. It's especially odd because this is a change we are making after the book has already been out on bookstore shelves for over a year. A re-writing of history.

In a similar situation. Melanie is lettering a book called Zatch Bell (it has a show on Cartoon Network that we've never seen- no cable) and was asked to go back and cover up some frontal nudity on the main character that is some sort of magic little boy (she put boxers on him to cover some weenie/ballz).

we did get seated (tabled?) in a pretty dead spot for foot traffic, but fortunately by the luck of the draw, we shared a table with the awesome gucky . She had not finished her mini-comic in time and used her table space to host friend's wares including himynameisjamie who does some nice and funny stuff. Also helping man the table was the very fun and sweet poodah. Back on our side we had some help from lilmeangirl and Liam who did a bit of carnival barking and drinking, unfortunately through no fault of anyone, this did not equal much in sales. In fact I sold only four comics on the first day.

That night we had Indian and Beer in SF with Hank, and the Wagners then ended up going to Sunset to make a brief appearance at the Isotope(comic store) party/award show. There I met Dan and Christopher christafa who do some cool new books for SLG (Cocopiazo and The Ghouly Boys, respectively).

Honestly after the poor sales of Saturday and lack of sleep M and I had a hard time deciding to get out of bed to do it all over again Sunday. Thankfully we did and It turned around right away. M was selling her stuff rapid fire nearly all day and I with the draw of some cheap original Tick art (a bit to cheap- I quickly realized) managed to rope in plenty myself.We also met some editors from VIZ for the first time and even got invited to do a "business lunch" in SF sometime.

Other highlights were chatting with m' pal Shannon Wheeler tmcm and handing off contributor copies of the Laugh Riot comic to one of my fave cartoonists the now bearded johnnyryan.

Oh and one last meeting of my now favorite punk rock cartoonist, Mike Hersh of Rabid Animal Komix. Mike, as it happens lives right down the street from me, and thank god, I only have issue #1 and #2. So we'll be hanging out soon.

That’s all I can think of now. And I'm really sick of making these LJ tags for peoples names.

Oh, also M and I went and saw Gene Wilder speak last night in SF. It was cool. he is a very glowing and funny man.

the boxes have arrived First off, thank you to everyone who supported my efforts with encouragement and proofreading. The books are stacked up in the living room (soon to be in the garage) safe and sound with the minimum of spelling mistakes (yes, there are some and it's completely my fault... hey, that's what 2nd printings are for). It's nice to finally have a comic printed after my three year dry spell after the Tick and I parted ways.

So now all I have to do is sell the little fuckers. As my friend Andre can attest (we did a comic called Tapestry back in 93-95), I am neither a businessman nor a great self-promoter, so it may take a while to sell enough comics to print issue #3. In fact, while I would do signings for the Tick, I would nervously discourage potential costumers explaining that the Ben Edlund issues of the Tick were the only ones really worth the effort and frankly some of the ones I worked on had horribly bland and insipid writing (I only wrote a few stories so I can only take so much credit for them sucking).

Anyway the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco is this weekend, Melanie and her PS Comics and I are sharing half a table (with Liam as a floating pitchman/motivational speaker Sat). So for the first time I am promoting something that is completely my fault. I have pretty low expectations, but perhaps not low enough. I'll do my best and try to be professional, engaging, and sell my wares with a song in my heart.

I am also trying to silkscreen a Flickers t-shirt and having a rough time at it. My first two attempts have been a disaster. I am trying for the third and last time this morning.

HELP! I am a horrible speller. And I need some help. If you are bored on this fine Friday evening help me out by proofing my comic that needs to go out to the printers tomorrow . just email me with a list of my spelling and grammar mistakes. Please! Someone help me Melanie is gone to India I am all alone with only bad spelling to keep me company.http://www.flophousecomics.com/flicker2.pdf

I know it isn't much, but I’ll add you to my thanks list in the back of the book and buy you a smoothie.

gabe@flophousecomics.com

we don't have blinds up yet at the new pad and I keep making eye contact with people walking by outside on the sidewalk. Maybe one of them is a good speller.

comics for printer/new house/India all by the 3rd This next week is going to be brutal. I have finished my Neil Hamburger comic, but then i still have at least thirty pages left to finish lettering and greytone to get things together for the printer by the 3rd. To make things more complicated Minty and I are moving in to her new house before then (Tuesday?) and then she leaves for India the day after move in. If I survive this and actually get my comics printed in time for APE(Alternative Press Expo) I will be very impressed with life.

My pal Andre and Mr. Eisner Recently one of my favorite cartoonists died. I don't have much to say about the man that wasn't already said in a far spiffier way by a friend of mine Andre Salles. Andre did a nice piece about the death, and more importantly, the life of Will Eisner on his weekly music review site "Tuesday Morning Three AM."

brain is hangin upside down I just finished about two weeks of manga retouch/lettering in approx three days. I am completely frazzled. I am glad to be done just in time to go hang out with Indy who is in SF for a few days. I havn't seen that guy in several years(five?).

The book I was working on was the second volume of this book..

which just arrived on my doorstep as i came home from finishing today. Normally I don't get copies of the books that i do. So i really appreciate my sweet editor Yuki for throwing me a copy.